[plasticbugs]

I learned by tracing a complicated clip art raster image of a flower using the ‘pen’ tool. You eventually get a feel for how to space your points for each segment of the line you’re tracing.

If using Illustrator, it’s important to use the keyboard shortcuts so you’re not diving into the menu between points - clicking a menu or tool will cause you to switch out of ‘drawing’ mode forcing you to awkwardly restart your line from the last point you made.

Important keys: alt/option, ctrl, space for moving around the scene without breaking your line, shift, and A and V for toggling between selection types (point/line). Play around with alt and ctrl keys while dragging handles - you can create corners by ‘breaking’ the straight bezier handle that controls the curve shape.

Good luck. Find an interesting piece of clip art and have at it. Option clicking a point with handles will turn it into a corner. Option clicking that same point while dragging out will recreate the bezier handle.

Photoshop’s path tool works the same way with the same shortcuts. However it’s primarily used for making a selection and not for drawing per se. You can export paths out of Photoshop but I highly recommend using Illustrator and not Photoshop for learning the pen tool.